The Scarlet Letter eBook

“Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word
for old Roger Chillingworth?” answered he, raising
himself from his stooping posture. “With
all my heart! Why, mistress, I hear good tidings
of you on all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve,
a magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing
of your affairs, Mistress Hester, and whispered me
that there had been question concerning you in the
council. It was debated whether or no, with
safety to the commonweal, yonder scarlet letter might
be taken off your bosom. On my life, Hester,
I made my intreaty to the worshipful magistrate that
it might be done forthwith.”

“It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates
to take off the badge,” calmly replied Hester.
“Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall
away of its own nature, or be transformed into something
that should speak a different purport.”

“Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better,”
rejoined he, “A woman must needs follow her
own fancy touching the adornment of her person.
The letter is gaily embroidered, and shows right
bravely on your bosom!”

All this while Hester had been looking steadily at
the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten,
to discern what a change had been wrought upon him
within the past seven years. It was not so much
that he had grown older; for though the traces of
advancing life were visible he bore his age well, and
seemed to retain a wiry vigour and alertness.
But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious
man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered
in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded
by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully
guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose
to mask this expression with a smile, but the latter
played him false, and flickered over his visage so
derisively that the spectator could see his blackness
all the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there
came a glare of red light out of his eyes, as if the
old man’s soul were on fire and kept on smouldering
duskily within his breast, until by some casual puff
of passion it was blown into a momentary flame.
This he repressed as speedily as possible, and strove
to look as if nothing of the kind had happened.

In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking
evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself
into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space
of time, undertake a devil’s office. This
unhappy person had effected such a transformation
by devoting himself for seven years to the constant
analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving
his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery
tortures which he analysed and gloated over.

The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne’s
bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility
of which came partly home to her.

“What see you in my face,” asked the physician,
“that you look at it so earnestly?”

“Something that would make me weep, if there
were any tears bitter enough for it,” answered
she. “But let it pass! It is of
yonder miserable man that I would speak.”